Clockwork Hearts
by Legendarypanda
Summary: What is a bullied teenage boy to do when nothing is going his way? Get superpowers of course! What happens when Peter Parker becomes the hero that Gwen Stacey needs in her life? (PeterxGwen) (HarryxMary Jane)


Clockwork Hearts

A story of the Amazing Spiderman

By Legendarypanda

 ** _Chapter one_**

 _Peter Parker_

 ***Peter's POV***

I walked onto the tacky yellow school-bus, greeted that morning by the usual, blue-collar, Mexican stereotype who drove me every day; he nodded and smiled with a jolly if somewhat over the top call of 'hola papacito' and clapped me hard on the shoulder. His name was Jesus, and he wore a cross on his neck, I always liked him. I gave him the same smile and then clapped him on the shoulder as I looked on with envy at my best friend Harry Osborn, and the beautiful redhead he was sitting with. Mary Jane Watson, the girl next-door who I had been in love with since the first day she had moved to town. They were holding hands and laughing as she received a kiss from him right on the lips. I felt my blood boil for a second, and then I saw the girl I'd had a crush on since freshman year sitting in the back of the bus with her nose stuck in a copy of _Crime and Punishment;_ completely oblivious to the noise and chaos all around her. I stopped briefly in front of the couple to receive the obligatory what's up man from Harry who looked like he had been doing some sort of crack the night before and had sobered up on coffee. Inwardly I called him every name I could think of, both worrying for my best friend and hating him at the same time.

It wasn't Harry I hated, no, it was the fact that he was some pretentious rich boy who had the girl that everyone seemed to want and still managed to fuck it up. I looked at MJ and felt ill, seeing the gorgeous redhead and knowing how badly I had wanted her for years but was never enough. No, but Harry was, Harry the stoner, Harry the rich boy, Harry, Harry, always Harry. The Osborn heir seemed to get everything he wanted and everything came easy for him, and he still managed to be a fuck up. That was what really pissed me off and made me make up a mixture of insults I was proud I even thought of. Some of the curses were in the itty bitty pieces of Spanish I had picked up from Jesus, some of them in gibberish, and some of them were very creative. Mixtures of various cultures and languages which I did not really understand but found funny all the time, heck it even made me laugh aloud a little.

One in particular I picked up from Mrs. Burgenstien who lived next door on the other side of me, opposite from the Watson's. She was a mean old hag of a woman who screamed at the paper boy the same thing every morning. Something about sprouting the head of a fish...I don't know. At the present moment having run out of mental insults to fling at the two of them and began to combine the three versions into some very imaginative ones I'm surprised I even thought of and made a mental note to write them down later on. All the while keeping a smile I both hated and loved them, I loved the fact that my two best friends Fifteen years I waited for Mary Jane Watson and she never gave me the time of day, something about seeing me as a 'best friend' or a 'brother' despite constantly flirting with me, even kissing me once at central park when we were twelve. She was always sending me mixed signals and toying with me like I'm some fish she dangled whenever she goddamned felt like it.

She had been my literal Mary Jane, my addictive drug for the past half a decade now, and to see her with him like this, it was like the worst form of withdrawal that any addict could go through. My lips felt cold for a moment, as I remembered that kiss in Central Park five years ago, feeling my heart constrict as I remembered the wetness of her kiss, the feeling of her lips although it had been just a light peck on the lips. Not a real kiss, nothing in comparison to what I had seen her giving Harry in their secret little hide-holes beneath the stairwells at school before class and after. But still it was the closest thing to a real kiss I had ever had and the thought made me feel even more lonely and pathetic than ever. I was the addict, going through forced detox and my best friend was the guy who had stolen my drug, like some sort of pothead minus the weed; fitting analogy considering that her name was a synonym for that sort of thing.

Hey my uncle loves Rick James okay, don't make fun of me!

I felt like an idiot standing there exchanging pleasantries with the two of them while the last few stragglers from my block stumbled sleepily onto the bus with a dead, zombified look in their eyes brought on by a mixture of late nights and too much TV. I liked to make a game out of what had kept them up the night before, looking at their clothes and the way their hair was done or not done by the looks of it I played, 'guess the vice' in my head. Billy Shaw had been up all night eating cheese-puffs and rocking the bong like he did every night. Amy Daniels had hickies all over her neck and her clothes were on backwards and inside out, no need to guess what she had been up to the night before, although my next guess was which one of the dumbass jockies had taken that ride, I was probably the only guy in the Sr. year she hasn't slept with and not by choice.

Yep, that was me, the hopeless pathetic loser with puppy-eyes for his best friend's girl and the whole school knew it too. It was like that Rick Springfield song about that Jesse guy, again my uncle, quit smirking! I wondered if everyone could see how pathetic I felt, wondered how obvious it was and it must have been very obvious. Because most men passed by us but a few of them glanced at MJ and she smiled graciously at them, waving up from her seat and blushing at the compliments of, 'hey beautiful' and 'how ya doin' good-lookin.' A few of them gave Harry the bro-props, high-five hug, and a clap on the back as a sign of comradery before giving me a damn-near pitying look as if to say, 'you poor bastard just sitting here out in the cold while the girl you want sucks-face with your almost brother' and it made me feel even more useless than usual and my morale dropped even lower besides. I glared as she kissed his cheek, tightening my smile into a grimace and forcing out a dry, humorless laugh.

Which was good, because Harry was telling me some stupid joke and assumed I got the punchline as he clapped me on the shoulder, saying, "Good one eh Petey?"

"Haha yeah," I said, inwardly rolling my eyes.

God I detested nicknames.

In fact, I hated this whole stupid situation, hated that I was the fact that the girl I wanted was making goo-goo eyes at my best friend, hated that Mary Jane knew how I felt about her but didn't seem to give a shit. Hated that every seat on the bus was already taken which meant I now had to sit in the bumpy-bump back seats despite the fact that I get carsick and worst of all it was directly behind the current objects of my consternation. But there was nothing I could do about it as Jesus shouted that we had all better get to our seats because he was not looking for a lawsuit when we face-planted on the rubbery plastic floor and broke our noses. So I said goodbye to the couple, waving with a false smile as a sleepy MJ leaned on his shoulder for a little extra snooze before the drudgery of the day began and I felt so envious that my hand curled into a fist. She knew I liked her, had told me that she felt the same way and had even made me believe her spending all summer with me before the two of us had gone to the OsCorp summer children's program and I had met the guy who would become my right-hand man.

Little did I know that meeting him, befriending him, would be the biggest mistake of my life. MJ had been mine, we had been so close, till she had met the charming, wealthy, Harold Osborn had set his sights on her too and that had been it for me, once she had seen him I had pretty much ceased to exist in her eyes. Not that anyone else could blame her, after all, he was the catch of the century and I was well not. So I had to settle for just being friends, We hugged, I waved at MJ and then went to the only available seat right next to the pretty, nerdy blonde who had no interest in the teen drama going on around her. I scanned the bus a third time hoping for some reason not to sit next to her but it was the only seat available. So with a sigh, I sat down and tried to appear casual; stare straight ahead and not make eye-contact with her as I pondered the two lovebirds.

Harry was everything I wasn't, rich, handsome, and flashy, Mr. 'I-drive-a-jag and my daddy owns OsCorp,' Mr. Wonderful who shows up and throws his money around and she's all over that just like any other girl would be. They were P.S. 121's newest power-couple, everyone was always talking about how _romantic_ it was that the heir to the Osborn fortune had picked such a poor and down-to-earth girl from a broken home. What made it worse was that one could never stop talking about the other, whenever I was with Harry I had to hear from both him and his dad about how awesomely awesome MJ was and sometimes even the last night's intimate on-goings cuz really the man had no filter. And when I was with Mary, all I ever heard was how wonderfully wonderful Mr. Perfect was, how his father, the great Norman Osborn was the father she never had, how she couldn't wait to start a family with him and so on and so forth.

I pretended to be happy for them, pretended to cheer Harry on with his escapades and be ever-so-interested in her fantasies of weddings and two kids with a frickin white picket fence. Inside I was positively fuming, the longer those two staid together the more jealous I got, it was bad enough to see the two people you cared about the most in the world be together when on the one hand, well you loved them and on the other you were the one who was left out in the cold and the whole world knew it to. It was like the entire world was in on the cruel joke and having a good long laugh at my expense. Everyone was always talking about how they were a shoe-in for prom royalty; the one everyone wanted to be and I was rapidly beginning to resent them. It was petty I know, stupid even but how would you feel if your best friend moved in on the love of your life and swept her off her feet?

What? No response, yeah that's what I thought!

I stared a hole through them simply because it seemed like the best option; looking out the window would make me seem like some pining third-point in a love-triangle who was left out in the cold. The only thing that made it not was the absence of a sad romantic violin being played by a tiny Yiddish man sitting on a roof, No thanks, window was not an option, which meant that turning to the right was not an option. I could of course, face backwards, look out the rear-view window at the intersection of my New York apartment faded in the distance. Nope! Not a good idea, I was feeling queasy and facing backwards in the rocking section would make my morning pancakes come right back up. Not really a good idea because well, call me a pussy if you want but my aunt May made the best pancakes ever and I mean _ever._ Like seriously, if I died and went to heaven and heaven had a taste, it would be my aunt's pancakes, hell, if I committed murder and was on death row I would call her up to make them for my last meal.

That being said, I had one of two options. look to my left or keep staring at my so-called friends And if I looked to my left I would be staring at the blonde girl just like I always did during chemistry class and then she might look at me and worse, want to _talk._ Not that I don't want to talk to her, believe me I did, I had a thousand things I wanted to say to her and all of them sappy and far more romantic in my head I was sure. But all those things would vanish the moment I had to make small-talk, I was not a social butterfly and became as tongue-tied as a schoolboy in a bad teen romcom, complete with glasses, president of nerd clubs like the chess team of which I had several trophies and was quite good. But that wasn't saying much in the ladies' man category. Nope speaking to her was definitely not an option bu didn't make eye-contact, I didn't have to speak to her.

Best to ride this out and pretend I couldn't hear the pages of her book as they hissed gently between her fingers. Why did my uncle Ben's car have to be broken down lately, forcing me to take the fuckin bus which now made me sit next to the other pretty girl who refused to talk to me. why did I have to sit here and wait for the world to end while the two girls I liked the most were both right in front of me and never bothered to say a bus screeched to a halt in front of the brick walls of the public high school, the golden lettering announcing us having arrived at the front door of the school. Jesus swung the doors open with a soft hiss, and the students began to file off in an unorderly fashion which caused a few people to trip- I wasn't one of them thank God- for small favors and as I got off I groaned inwardly at the sight of the person coming toward me and my blonde car-mate.

Flash Thompson.

This guy was the smartest on the basketball team, which in my humble opinion was kinda like being like being the tallest dwarf; a total oxymoron. These guys, they were all a bunch of meatheads who prayed to the Sports Gods for the gifts of beef jerky and protein shakes and I hated all of them. But I hated Flash most of all, mainly because he was a massive dick and made a point of bullying everyone who he was unfortunate enough to come into close contact with. And if there was one thing I can't stand it was a bully, and he was a massive one if ever there was. I sensed him coming toward me, heard the stomping of his steel-toed, non-regulation boots as he crushed a discarded soda-can underneath his foot as he stomped toward me like the giant gorilla that he was. Here it came, the daily insults and jabs and me grinding my teeth as I made an effort to be a bigger person and walk away.

"Hey Puker! he jabbed slapping me hard on the back.

I ignored him.

He didn't seem to notice that and followed me down the hall as I went to my locker, counting to ten in my head to keep calm and wishing I had kept my New Year's resolution to work out more over the summer. How I would have loved to have just decked the asshole and had done with it but my arms while not scrawny, were nowhere near the bulk of his and I knew I would never be able to beat him mono-e-mono. So I gritted my teeth and turned the corner stopping at my door to unlock my cubby and lighten the load of textbooks before heading to my homeroom and first class of the day. But as I opened it up Flash's meaty hand slammed it shut again, right on the tips of my fingers causing me to grunt and shake my bruised hand to ease the burning.

"Hey I'm talkin' to you Puker!" I tried to ignore him and tend to my hand, but he grabbed me and shoved my face under his armpit giving me a nuggie.

"It's Parker." I said bitterly, then added, "Eugene."

"What did you call me punk?" he asked glaringly.

Well No going back now, "Eugene," I said from the crook of his armpit,"That is your real name right? Oh, no wait my mistake, it's dickhead." I smirked, enjoying myself.

Big Mistake! He grabbed me by the lapels of my uncle's hand-me-down corduroy jacket and slammed me hard against the side of the school, my head scraping the plaster and my eyes sparking a little bit as I became dazed and confused. When my eyes focused again the brute was staring at me with his foul-smelling nostrils flaring at me and his spit flying in my face. Seriously, had this guy never heard of dental floss or a toothbrush? I gagged as he brought his knee up and slammed it into my groin causing me to double-over but he didn't let me drop to the floor and call it a day, no, he grabbed me by the back of the head and slammed me so hard into the wall that I felt my brain shutting down and I knew I was passing out, I heard Flash shout, something along the lines of 'you're a dead man walkin' Puker!' before the noise from him stomping on something breakable made me panic.

The room was blurry and my glasses had fallen off and I knew what that asshole had done. I tried to feel for them, pick up the frames at the very least but I was too tired, too dizzy, the pain in my groin traveling all the way up to my head making it feel light and swimming. the last thing I heard before I blacked out was the school bell ringing in time with the internal noise in my ears and a blurry blonde something-or-other bending over me and then I don't remember what happened after that. The last thing I do remember thinking was, well welcome to high school, it sucks and then you die, before I lost track of time completely.


End file.
